Norfolk auction brings community together to help rebuild Curling Club

MICHELLE MERLIN/Register Citizen
150 people signed up to attend an auction at the Norfolk Country Club to raise money for the Norfolk Curling Club. Its building burned down last year and the group is trying to get the funds to rebuild a new, state-of-the-art facility.

NORFOLK -- After Norfolk's Curling Club was burned down in December 2011, people in the Norfolk community are coming together to help raise money to rebuild the facilities.

About 150 people signed up to attend an auction to raise money for the club and nearly all of them came. The Norfolk Country Club hosted the $75 per person event and served hors d'oeurves to the guests.

Guests called the curling club a mainstay of the town.

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"Norfolk is the ice box of Connecticut," said Star Childs, a curling club members whose family helped found the Norfolk Curling Club. The idea initially took form in his grandparents barn, where they would freeze ice over night.

The curling club will use the money to rebuild its facility which will be more energy efficient than the old one which had been built in the 1950's. Club president Mary Fanette says that the new equipment will be able to make ice faster and probably extend the curling season so that it starts earlier in the fall and ends later in the winter.

The proposal for the new facility will be heard by Norfolk Planning and Zoning on Tuesday. If everything goes smoothly, Fanette expects the new facility to be open in fall 2013.

Since the club burned down, Fanette says more people have become interested in curling.

Fanette is also working with Botelle School to get children involved with curling.

The cross-generational aspect of curling is one of its allures. The Curling Club used to hold events for families and sometimes up to three generations would participate in one game.

"For someone to commit such a destructive act was just awful," said Childs.

The club has enough money to start rebuilding but hopes to raise $1.5 million in all.

Fanette says the group doesn't yet have enough money to complete the project.

Kyle Majewski and Matthew Carey, 19, were arrested last year for allegedly burning down the club, burglarizing another house and stealing a road sign.